Boy Meets Soccer

I’m a proud soccer mega-fan - and have created this newsletter to help others with an interest in the game take their fandom to the next level. Largely, I’m hoping to make soccer (and its history, tradition, and strange rules) feel a little more accessible.  

Personally, I fell in love with soccer when I was nine years old. Huddled around a small television in my grandparents’ apartment in Beirut during the wee hours of the morning, we watched the dramatic conclusion to the 1994 World Cup: a narrow win in penalties for Brazil. 

When Italian striker Roberto Baggio skied his penalty attempt - the game’s final action - over the goal, I let out a huge yelp in the middle of the night, shouting, “Brazil won! Brazil won!” I’d been telling distant cousins, neighbors, and anyone who’d listen that the Brazilians were a team of destiny that year, and my prediction had come true. I also had about $50 in bets on Brazil, which was make-or-break for nine-year-old Chris. 

We’d been watching this World Cup while spending the summer in Lebanon - my mother’s birthplace - and connecting with a heritage I didn’t yet know well as an American kid. It wasn’t possible to watch every tournament game that summer, in part because of electricity challenges that led to semi-regular blackouts in Lebanon during game times, but we held on long enough that July morning in 1994 to finish viewing the final - and to set the course of my life irreversibly.

I’d always been interested in soccer but, growing up, we just never had access to watch the best players in Europe. Today my kids watch Premier League games with ease on Peacock - not to mention Serie A battles on Paramount+, FA Cup clashes on ESPN+, and much more. They’ll never know the struggle of a would-be American soccer fan who grew up in the 1990s - a time when watching Real Madrid or Arsenal play from my couch in the Washington, DC suburbs was a pipe dream. 

Even without that ease of access, my love for soccer blossomed as a teen, and has been steadily growing throughout my adulthood. I take my family to games (high school, college, and various levels of professional soccer), and if there’s a Liverpool game playing over the weekend, my family knows that I’d prefer to be parked in front of the television to cheer on our Reds.

Otherwise, thanks for taking the time to read the Soccer AF newsletter and blog! I’m thankful to have found my soccer passion as an American, and I’m incredibly excited to share it with others.